Published German patent document DE 100 33 343 discloses a fuel injection system for an internal combustion engine, in particular a diesel engine, that includes an injection control system for monitoring and/or for resolving a conflict upon triggering of the actuator elements, in particular a conflict management system for superimposed injection curves of piezoactuators.
With so-called common rail piezoactuators, only one triggering edge can be executed at a time. For reasons of combustion engineering, however, it is necessary to apply the triggering of complementary banks in such a way that injections are superimposed. This is possible, e.g., with the circuit device known from published German patent document DE 100 33 343 for interconnecting piezoelectric elements, when the charging/discharging edges of the piezoelectric elements exhibit no overlap. With overlapping edges, provision is made in the context of the fuel injection system disclosed in, e.g., published German patent document DE 100 33 343, for the triggering action with low priority (hereinafter called the low-priority triggering action) to be shifted or shortened.
It is an object of the present invention to detect and determine edge overlaps, and to determine therefrom the necessary degree of time shifting or shortening out of the overlap region.